Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)1
Vice Admiral B. B. Schofield spent 42 years in the Royal Navy, after which he was fortunate to enjoy a long retirement until his death in 1984 aged 89. This enabled him to develop a second career as a naval historian, focusing not only on the naval and strategic issues of the day but also drawing on his own first-hand experiences, having served in both World Wars. Prior to giving his papers to the Imperial War Museum, I came across three files containing his research material for his fourth book, The Rescue Ships, published in 1968. Chief among his correspondents was Lieutenant Commander Louis F. Martyn, Rescue Ship Officer on the staff of the Principal Sea Transport Officer (PSTO) Clyde, whose duty it was to organize the Rescue Ship Service during the war. Formerly on coastal service, these small Merchant Navy vessels were mainly responsible for picking up survivors from torpedoed ships in the numerous convoys which steamed back and forth across the Atlantic as well as to Murmansk and Archangel in North Russia, including the ill-fated PQ 17. When required, they also provided invaluable medical assistance not only for the rescued men but also for crew members of the ships in convoy.
In 1966, upon the recommendation of Sir John McNee, temporary Surgeon Rear Admiral during the war, Martyn had approached my father to write the history of the ‘Rescue Ships’, since, as Director of the Trade Division in the Admiralty during the critical years, 1941 to 1943, he had been closely connected with the Rescue Ship Service.2 To assist his research, Martyn gave my father ‘a suitcase full’ of the original Masters’ Reports which he had retained for 20 years; he also made available a document on the Rescue Ship Service, which he had been requested to write for distribution at the end of the war, and which he anticipated would form the ‘heart’ of the book.3 To personalize the narrative my father contacted many of the merchant seamen and the naval doctors who had served in the ships, since, as he politely said ‘official reports would make rather dull reading without some account of the officers and men who manned the ships.’4
Indicative of the strictures still in force in the 1960s, before publication the manuscript was submitted for approval to the Defence Secretariat Division of the Ministry of Defence. The response was that it had been read ‘with interest’ and the Navy Department had no objection to its publication.5
As so often happens following the publication of a book, many people contacted my father both extolling the fact that the story had at last been written and also providing fresh material by relating their own experiences; others wrote with minor corrections (which he promised to rectify in the ‘next’ edition, little realizing that it would be 56 years later!). In addition, given that he had just published a book on the Russian convoys, and that the events he was describing were fresher in the memory than they are today, he had taken for granted the reader’s contextual knowledge of the voyages undertaken by the Rescue Ships. In this new edition, without altering the substance of the narrative, I have both corrected the errors and expanded it, using previously unpublished source material, including information relating to the controversial decision to ‘scatter’ the convoy, PQ 17. I have also given the necessary context by drawing on information contained in my father’s other published works. Finally, going through the correspondence I discovered that Martyn was anxious to be given the credit for building up the Rescue Fleet ‘from simply nothing.’ However, because he requested to be listed as co-author it was difficult for him to seem to be ‘blowing his own trumpet’.6 This I have now endeavoured to rectify.
The story today is as dramatic as it was over 80 years ago, when the events described took place against the backdrop of world war on land and at sea; the actions of the merchant seamen and the medical officers deputed to travel with the convoys remain as heroic as they were at the time and the losses as tragic. Inasmuch as the men rejoiced at those they saved, they had to endure immense sadness when they saw the lives of others literally ebb away in freezing conditions in an unforgiving ocean. From a twenty-first-century vantage point it is staggering to think that, given the vast number of convoys operating on routes throughout the world, only 30 ships of an average of 1,500 gross registered tons were ever available to pick up survivors. It truly is a record of ‘great deeds’ in ‘little ships’.
Victoria Schofield